Free State by-election shows “massive collapse” in ANC support

The by-election in theMetsimaholo municipality is revealing even more cracks in the ANC support base. People are fed up and the results are proving it.

Thursday’s by-election in the Metsimaholo Free State municipality was always going to be used as an indicator of how things may go in 2019. While the final results are yet to come in, one election analyst says what we know so far should worry the ANC.

Dawie Scholtz is a local election analyst and has gathered a large following over the last few election cycles. Scholtz uses social media to tweet number specifics and what it means/could mean for the overall result.

Wednesday’s by-election saw 393 candidates representing 15 political parties fighting for the 21 ward and 21 PR seats. The election was forced to take place after the council dissolved in July after it wasn’t able to table a budget to the municipality for the upcoming 2017/18 financial year.

While the results tricked in on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, Scholtz was tweeting numbers, picking up on the trends and calculating and predictions. The trend was clear, the ANC is in trouble.

“This is a fascinating by-election. What we see is a really massive collapse of the ANC in township vote across Metsimaholo. In 2011 it received 82% of the votes‚ in 2014 it was 76%‚ in 2016 62% and now the votes have dropped to 42%‚” Scholtz said.

Just a reminder again on the magnitude of what is happening in the townships in Metsimaholo:

Another surprising takeaway is how the South African Communist Party (SACP) is doing well, even though it is the first election they are contesting. Scholtz said it was clear that they were taking votes away from the ANC.

The latest projection from Thursday morning all but confirmed that there would be another coalition. Additionally, while the DA made little gains in the township, the EFF made big gains.